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She has the resources to seek him out, stops herself from doing so at least half a dozen times before she walks into work one chilly morning and discovers it. Another small pot of white roses on top of the papers scattered across her desk.
It’s not the impromptu visit she’d found herself anticipating with a sort of hope she hadn’t experienced in a while, but it’s not nothing, either.
She shrugs off the looks she knows she’s receiving as her fingers pluck the note that came with it, eyes scanning it. Two words; familiar words that make her heart ache and force her to blink away the unbidden tears that well up. From the memory or rush of relief, she isn’t certain. Maybe a mixture of both.
Take care.
There’s no name signed at the bottom but they both know it’s unnecessary. And he’s always been honest with her, so she’ll take what she’s given and hope this meant he was well. As well as he could be.
The breath that shudders out of her lungs is shaky, but she feels infinitely lighter.
She doesn’t place the flowers on her window ledge where the others once sat.
She first considers setting them on her countertop, near the sink, so maybe her eyes can drift over to them absentmindedly while she’s washing the dishes.
Then she sets them in the middle of her coffee table, so maybe during those times she’s hunched over scribbled post-its and typing out another exposé, she can look over at them, a momentary distraction from whichever grim crime she’s been dwelling on.
She ends up putting them on the nightstand in her room, where they can still get a hint of sunlight, ignoring how ridiculously flustered that decision makes her. It’s not like Frank’s going to climb in through her window and discover them by her bed and read something into it.
Even she pointedly doesn’t read into how she feels before she switches the light off, darkness enveloping her.
She’d be the first to admit she doesn’t have a green thumb. The others he brought—ones that had served an actual purpose beyond, “Hey, I’m still breathing and thought you’d like to know”—are already wilted and dried up, but she hadn’t left them on the ledge, had put them in the back of her closet instead of getting rid of them.
The new ones…she remembers to water and nurture them, determined to keep them alive and thriving as best as she can.
The paper receives another threatening letter, a special gift just for her. It’s not what she wanted a week before Christmas. She’s already swamped, stressed, a little sad because another holiday season loomed depressingly over her and she would likely spend it alone in her apartment, wrapped in a blanket and watching Christmas classics.
It’s unwanted but doesn’t scare or shock her, comes with the territory of pursuing leads and investigating criminals.
But she can sense in some way that Frank will turn up, is confident enough to bet he’ll find out, perhaps if the threat is acted upon.
She hates how she’s resorted to assuming he’ll come to her rescue, and there’s a little voice in her head telling her that even if he did worry for her, he knows she can take care of herself if she had to.
That doesn’t seem to stop how she expects him to be around every corner, to make an appearance only to ask her to back off a little, not be so aggressive, not keep running headfirst into danger. She’d refuse, because it’s a compulsion, seeking out the truth and fighting for justice the only way she can. She’d tell him she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to.
But she doesn’t have to tell him any of that, because he doesn’t turn up.
She arrives home to an unlocked door on Christmas Eve.
Her fingers grip the cool metal so tight her knuckles are bone-white, steeling herself for whatever she’s about to find behind her door, when the smell of some Italian dish hits her before the sight of the man in her kitchen.
Nothing could have prepared her for this, the situation toeing the edge of comical if she hadn’t been so frightened moments ago.
She expels a breath she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding, bursting out, “What the hell, Frank?”
“At least I can take comfort in knowing you’ll shoot whoever breaks in,” he says dryly, calm and collected, like she hadn’t been one impulse away from putting a bullet in his chest for pulling out every pot and pan she owned to cook a meal. “Your security system is in dire need of some updates.”
She places the gun down, hand trembling from the adrenaline, wanting to make some quip about how she wasn’t exactly trying to live in constant paranoia about having her place broken into, but all that comes out of her mouth is, “Jesus Christ. Where have you been?”
He gives her this look, as if telling her that can wait, and it strikes her how normal him preparing their plates seems. She’d only ever had glimpses of normal with this man; it’s peculiar, but in the best of ways, settling down across from him and sharing a meal without some ominous threat or ulterior motive.
She thinks she mumbles something about it being delicious—not a lie, who knew Frank Castle would be better in the kitchen than her?—but she merely pokes at it, waiting for him to begin a spiel about how she needed to up her security and not chase after people who wanted to harm her.
But he doesn’t, just keeps eating, until she lets her fork slip from her fingers, the loud clattering making him look up and meet her eyes.
He doesn’t make her ask again.
He tells her everything then; tells her about Billy Russo, about his new name that makes her press her lips together, so she won’t emit a laugh, about the meetings he’s going to. About Curtis and the Lieberman’s. It’s a futile effort, how she attempts to tamper down how happy and pleased for him she is, that he’s trying to heal, that he’s found some semblance of routine. Of normality.
An after.
“I didn’t bring a gift, so,” he nods down at the food, returns her grin with a faint smile. “The last time I thought your locks looked faulty. Wanted to prove it. I’ll fix ‘em.”
It seems like so much more than simply a promise to repair the stupid lock.
He offers to clean up, but she stands as he does, gathering her plate as she interjects that she can, that it can wait. He insists stubbornly that he can get it done now, saying he can clean up the mess he made as he makes her relinquish her grip on the dish.
“Well, who am I to stop a man from cleaning up?” Her grin widens when he laughs under his breath at the comment, rolling up his sleeves.
It’s so domestic, though, watching him, but she makes sure to not let any sentence containing that word slip. She’d planned on curling up on her sofa with coffee, shed a few tears while she watched It’s a Wonderful Life in the early hours of Christmas morning. That’s one film she’d never offer him to stay and watch with her, so she busies herself by brewing the coffee instead, sneaking glances at him every few minutes.
“I think,” she pauses, throat clogged with emotion, shaking her head as if it will shake the thought away. I think I imagined that if you found your after, so could I. “Never mind.”
He wants to press her, a quick glance confirms it, but he lets it drop. She’s grateful, not ready to confess that or willing to potentially sour whatever is happening right now.
They end up on the sofa, hands curled around cooling mugs they’ve nearly drained dry, when he says, “I want you to meet them.” She arches a brow, slightly enamored by how one corner of his mouth lifts in a crooked smile before he continues. “Curtis. David’s family. Sarah wants to meet you; you’d like her.”
“Sure,” she agrees with a nod, tries to maintain composure even as her chest feels too tight, because this is him inviting her into his life, inviting her to take part in what she’d steadfastly hoped he could attain. “I’d love to.” She licks her lips, unable to ignore how his eyes flicker down to track the movement and linger there or how heat spreads through her at the action. But there remains a hesitancy between them despite this intimacy she can no longer feign obliviousness of, and she’s too unsure about shattering this fragile thing they've created. “So, are you ever going to tell me how you found out about the letter?”
His brows knit together, body shifting closer to hers as confusion washes over his features and he echoes, “’The letter?’”
She’d thought, been so sure that was still the reason for this visit. “I thought,” she stumbles, follows how he sets his cup on the table. “I got this letter, a week ago.”
By the clenching of his jaw she knows she doesn’t have to elaborate on what the nature of the letter was. “I guess I can’t convince you to write about something else,” he says finally, almost resignedly.
“Well, God knows I couldn’t give dating advice for the life of me,” she jokes with a wry grin, but he doesn’t smile. “Besides, I love what I do. It’s worth the risk for me.”
She startles when he reaches out, hand cupping the side of her face, and she vaguely recalls this touch occurring once before, beyond the throbbing pain in her temple and ringing in her ears after the bomb had gone off. Only this time there’s no bomb, nothing life-threatening, just his thumb tenderly sweeping the length of her cheekbone. His eyes never leave hers even as he visibly swallows a few times. “Just promise me you’ll let me know if you need help, yeah?”
She answers by leaning forward and brushing her lips against his with the faintest of pressure. His hand doesn’t fall away, but he doesn’t respond, and she panics that she misread all of this, begins to pull back before his fingers tangle in her hair and anchor her in place, murmuring something she can’t catch into the kiss.
He tastes like coffee, and it’d be so simple, so easy, to rise on unsteady legs and stumble backwards into her room, her bed, without breaking away or a second thought. But neither of them are ready for that, she knows, yet it doesn’t stop her from asking him to stay when she breaks the connection, his forehead resting against hers.
She can see him debating how smart this decision would be, and she can’t say she blames him. But, “I don’t want to spend Christmas alone,” she tells him sincerely.
“Okay,” he answers so softly, that if she hadn’t been watching his lips, she might’ve missed it.
His eyes seem to land immediately on the roses. “I was wondering where you kept them.”
She traces one of the delicate petals with her fingertips before she switches the light off, settling down into the covers beside of him. “Keeping them there made me feel…comforted,” she confesses to the darkness, to herself, to him. “I’d look over at them, sometimes, after a nightmare.”
When I missed you.
There’s a few moments of silence, her heartbeat in her throat, before she feels him brush her hair aside, pressing his lips gently to the nape of her neck, wrapping an arm around her as she relaxes against him.
She drifts off under the comforting weight of it.